Local elections_part 2

The first part of our analysis was focused on cities, but a lot of changes happened on the county level also.

Local elections brought a change in leadership in eight counties, a rarity in the Croatian political context. HDZ won 13 counties in these elections, but they lost their stronghold Šibenik-Knin County, where the longtime county prefect and president of the Croatian Union of Counties Goran Pauk was convincingly defeated by the current mayor of Knin Marko Jelić, whose candidate also won in the symbolically important city of Knin. However, the HDZ regained power in Lika-Senj County and won the difficult Bjelovar-Bilogora and Varaždin Counties, in which political veterans Radimir Čačić and Damir Bajs lost power. Both are likely to continue their careers in the Croatian Parliament.

Although they have been convincingly winning the elections so far, now HDZ’s county prefects from the south - Nikola Dobroslavić in Dubrovnik-Neretva County, Blaženko Boban in Split-Dalmatia County and Božidar Longin in Zadar County have indeed defended their positions, but with much more difficulty. The results have shown "cracks" in the HDZ strongholds in which it has ruled for the last few decades.

In the first round, HDZ successfully kept Osijek-Baranja County (Ivan Anušić), Virovitica-Podravina County (Igor Andrović), Brod-Posavina County (Danijel Marušić) and Požega-Slavonia County (Antonija Jozić), which means the party was completely consolidated in Slavonia. The elections also created some new "heroes" among the party members - primarily HDZ's vice president Ivan Anušić, who achieved an overwhelming victory.

The SDP kept its two counties - Krapina-Zagorje County, where county prefect Željko Kolar won in the first round, and Primorje-Gorski Kotar County, where Zlatko Komadina had to compete in the second round for the first time, but has successfully defended his position and has won another term.

A unique story unfolded in the Istrian County, where Boris Miletić won by only 54 votes, but the election battle is not over yet - because the SDP will demand a recount of a suspiciously large number of annulled ballots (over 2,000).

Stjepan Kožić in Zagreb County and Darko Koren in Koprivnica-Križevci County also managed to defend their positions in the second round, but the most successful county prefect of this election is Matija Posavec from Međimurje, who won the first round with 64.61 percent of the vote.